Reading is fundamental. It’s a core skill for kids in early elementary school that unlocks not just the world of books but also essentially everything else. If your kid is struggling to read, it makes every other subject that much harder to absorb. The importance of it can make this process stressful.
At the same time, learning to read can be kind of magic. When it clicks, it can really click, and ultimately books are a joy. One of the best things in my house is the “kitchen library,” a small collection of books under the sink. The kids read them during dessert time (they have to talk to us during dinner). The library is basically just every Diary of a Wimpy Kid, their pages smeared with chocolate. What could be better?
Stress and joy — the twins of parenting. All we need to add to those is data. So here we go: the data on reading. When do kids learn, how to teach it, and can you make them love it?
When do kids learn to read?
Our best evidence on when kids learn to read comes from data collected by the U.S. Department of Education in a series of studies called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies, or ECLS. There are a number of ECLS cohorts, recruited either at birth or in kindergarten, who are followed over time and for whom we have data on reading skills at various ages.
The graph below shows data for the cohort who entered kindergarten in 1998-1999, on their evolution of reading skills from the start of kindergarten to the end of third grade. At the start of kindergarten in this group, more than half could recognize letters but virtually none could read. By the end of third grade, most students could read but many were still working on content evaluation.
This graph makes clear that — contrary to what many people think — very few kids know how to read at the start of kindergarten. There is a big jump in reading during both kindergarten and first grade. By third grade, kids are starting to find themselves “reading to learn” rather than “learning to read.”
Of course, there is variation. Some children do learn to read before they start school, and some take longer. But these numbers give a sense of the average, some sense of range, and a feel for the order in which these skills develop.
Whether there is a point at which you should be concerned about your child’s reading is ultimately a question for their teachers. In most school systems, your child’s teacher can keep you updated about where they are relative to expectations. Tutoring can be hugely impactful for kids who are struggling, and it is worth keeping your eye on this especially during second and third grade, when reading should be more fully developing.
What is the best way to teach reading?
I’ve discussed this before (and we have a podcast episode on it!). The simple answer is that the best way to teach reading skills is with a phonics-based system — that is, an approach that is based on learning letter sounds and then learning how to connect them together into words. This is in contrast to a “whole-language” approach, which focuses more on whole words and word recognition.
Of course, the idea of sounding out words is not new; this is the way reading has been taught for a very long time. In the 1960s, however, some educators became enamored of the whole-language idea. To somewhat oversimplify, the idea was: phonics can be dry and boring — wouldn’t it be better to just let kids absorb more interesting texts, and over time they’d learn to recognize words and read? After all, fluent adult readers just recognize words, right?
Actually, no, that is not right. For words longer than seven or eight letters, even fluent readers effectively sound them out; we read by “chunking” the words. You do it so fast you don’t even recognize it, but that core phonics skill is part of our reading life forever. This is a failure of the logic of “whole-language instruction,” and there is plenty of other evidence that this approach just doesn’t work.
Within the past few years, the idea of returning to more phonics-based instruction has permeated education policy. States and school districts have tried to move toward teaching methods that prioritize the “science of reading,” which basically means incorporating a lot of sounding out.
Two action items on this for parents. First, if you’re a parent of a school-age kid and you’re worried about reading instruction, ask the school about its curriculum approach. Second, if you are doing either primary or secondary instruction at home, pick up an approach that emphasizes phonics. Two that I like are the Bob Books and Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.
Can I make my kid love reading?
The honest truth is, some people like reading more than others. This is true of adults, and it is also true of kids. No matter what you do, you should expect some variation, and even if you love reading (as I do), you may find it challenging to produce a child who does.
However, there are a couple of ways to think about doing this. The first is to convey that reading can, in fact, be a leisure activity. Because kids learn to read in school, it can sometimes feel like reading is just for school, or homework. Finding a time when you read for leisure, perhaps as a whole family, is a way to reinforce that it can be fun.
The second insight is: kids like to have a choice in what they read. People tend to prefer to read on topics that they know and care about. Research has shown, for example, that kids more accurately remember a story if they have background knowledge of the topic, and that this background knowledge can make up for weaker reading skills. Finding books on topics your children care about, even if they do not seem that interesting to you, can keep them engaged.
The bottom line
- Very few kids know how to read at the start of kindergarten. Most learn to read over the course of kindergarten and first grade, and by third grade, kids are starting to find themselves “reading to learn” rather than “learning to read.”
- The best way to teach reading skills is with a phonics-based system, which involves learning letter sounds and then learning how to connect them together into words.
- Some kids are inherently going to enjoy reading more than others. To help inspire your child to enjoy reading, encourage the idea that reading is a leisure activity and not just for school, and give them a choice in what they read.
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I’d be curious to learn whether there’s data from how deaf people read compared to hearing people. I would imagine they’d be taught the whole-language approach since phonics wouldn’t make much sense…
Is there any data on how dual language immersion programs shift these averages?
I’m fine with some phonics, but I think they’re getting over emphasize. My 2nd grader is a solid reader, and his class still goes over phonics alllll the time. He is so bored. He reads on the way to school, so we joke about how he has to stop reading so he can go learn. At school they have them underlining vowel sounds in passages. His teacher lets him and one other kid read during this time sometimes, since they just don’t need more phonics.
*emphsizeD, sorry, don’t know how to fix that.
Thanks for writing about this important topic! As a former first grade teacher and someone who has studied this topic extensively, I’d like to offer an affirmation and a few friendly amendments:
1) I really appreciate the point that kids are unlikely to truly be reading before kindergarten. I will add that I actually think the year to be watching things most closely is first grade because that’s the year decoding should really be starting to click. If it’s not, it’s better to intervene sooner rather than later. One reason for this is the so-called Matthew Effect: the idea that the rich get richer (fast starters learn more faster by reading) and the poor get poorer (slow starters miss out on opportunities to learn from their own reading). This doesn’t mean that intervention in, say, second or third grade is too late. But I think first grade is a high leverage time to intervene and a time when parents should be making sure they are getting good information and data from teachers.
2) I think it’s important to make the distinction between decoding and comprehension. What you are mostly describing here is decoding, which means applying knowledge of letters and their sounds to recognize words. Teaching phonics is critical to helping students learn to decode. But students also need support to understand language, both oral and written. This should also happen in K-3 (in addition to phonics instruction), but becomes a greater focus in the grades beyond. Comprehension is less well understood, but vocabulary and background knowledge definitely play a role. Parents can support comprehension by exposing their kids to lots of information, not just by encouraging reading but also through discussion, museum visits, even TV, etc.
3) The science of reading is often mischaracterized as only focusing on phonics. That is not true. The science of reading also encompasses what we know about how kids learn to comprehend what they read. (As noted above, we know vocabulary and background knowledge play a role.) It’s really important to make this clear because it’s confusing to both parents and teachers when it is characterized as being synonymous with phonics and can lead to an overemphasis on phonics at the expense of comprehension. There are many stories of this happening in classrooms right now, unfortunately.